Britain's Best Home Cook: The New GBBO?

Public service announcement: Mary Berry is returning to BBC One as a cooking show judge next week! This is not a drill!

Mary, along with Duck and Waffle restaurant owner Dan Doherty and TV presenter Chris Bavin of Eat Well for Less and Food: Truth or Scare fame, will be judging the ten contestants on Britain’s Best Home Cook (#BBHC), which begins on Thursday May 3rd, and is presented by Claudia Winkleman.

Set to battle it out for the title – and move in together for the contest’s duration, as there’s apparently going to be an X Factor/The Apprentice/Big Brother element to this show – are home cooks Q (not the Star Trek: The Next Generation character, but a passionate cook with a love of French flavours), farmer Trevor, wine consultant Cyrus (another excellent name) and 999 call handler Katie, who likes to celebrate her Welsh roots with traditional recipes.

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There’s also civil servant Dipa, traditional home cook Fiona from County Down, Josie, who claims never to follow recipes (the series rebel?), Delia Smith superfan Philip (could get awk with Mary around), soul food fan Tobi and oncology research technician Pippa. Helping cure cancer and getting on the telly? We struggle to find two matching shoes in the morning.

With contestants’ heritage stemming from Kenya, Nigeria, India, Slovakia, the Philippines and 1970s Surrey, it seems highly likely that we won’t just be seeing the traditional cottage pie/fish and chips/toad in the hole British fare during the show.

In fact, in the first episode, the cooks will be serving up homemade burgers and sides in the signature, sorry ‘ultimate home favourite’ challenge, before facing an improvised round, based around a single ingredient in a Ready Steady Cook meets the GBBO technical challenge-like scenario.

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They’ll all be trying to avoid the dance-off, sorry, the elimination round, where they’ll have to fight for their place if they don’t want to be sent home. We’re very much looking forward to the scenes where they wheel their case out of the house and get in a taxi to say what they really think about the other contestants. Or is that a different show?

So, we think we’ve got our heads around it: it’s MasterChef meets Ready Steady Cook meets The Apprentice meets Big Brother meets The Big Family Cooking Showdown, with a former Great British Bake Off judge and a Strictly Come Dancing presenter? Ok…

…but where’s the ice-dancing?